The present disclosure relates generally to measuring cooling of a component and more particularly, to a system and method for measuring cooling effectiveness of a component.
A method of cooling an engine component includes providing an array of cooling holes on a surface of a component to enable formation of a cooling film that prevents overheating of the component during engine operation, for example. The effectiveness of an array of cooling holes in dispersing a cooling medium across the surface of a component is typically analyzed using known fluid computational methods. However, these methods have limitations in modeling the film cooling effectiveness accurately. Accurate fluid computational methods may require finite element grids on the surface of the component, which in turn requires long computation times and significant expenses to model temperature distribution on the film cooled surface.
A direct method of measuring cooling effectiveness of the component includes providing a thermocouple array on the surface of the component or pyrometer scanner to measure the surface temperature distribution. Such direct methods may require multiple thermocouples or a complex pyrometric system. Such measurement systems may not be capable of measuring the surface temperature distribution on the component at the desired resolution.
Thus, there is a need for an improved system and method for measuring effectiveness of cooling of a component.